The New Face of France's Far Right

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

Published: April 27, 2003

SAINT-CLOUD, France, April 25—
Marine Le Pen looks, sounds and thinks so much like her father that when she was a child, her mother called her ''the Clone,'' a nickname that sticks to this day.

Armed with long blond hair, a broad smile and an open manner, Ms. Le Pen, the 34-year-old offspring of Jean-Marie Le Pen, is the softer, younger side of the National Front, the far right-wing party that her 74-year-old father leads.

At the triannual party congress in Nice last weekend, Mr. Le Pen appointed her a vice president, giving her an automatic seat on the party's executive committee. No matter that Mr. Le Pen strongly condemns nepotism when other people are involved and that his daughter came in only 34th out of 137 candidates in an election for the central committee the day before (down from 10th during the previous election).

For the past year, though, Ms. Le Pen, a lawyer who is on her second marriage and has three children, has been the most vocal and visible spokeswoman for the 30-year-old party. She has pushed hard in print, radio and television interviews in France and abroad to ''de-demonize,'' as she says, its hard-line, anti-immigration, nationalist image.

''My emergence is a signal that, 'There are people like you in the National Front,' '' she said in an interview at the party's headquarters in this upscale Paris suburb. ''There are 70-year-old men and traditional Catholics and young female divorcees like me.''

So what is wrong with a little reward? ''This isn't nepotism,'' she said. ''Nepotism is when you give a relative a job that isn't deserved. I deserve this position. The criticism is the twitching of the party hacks.''

Her father also dismissed all criticism of his decision, telling reporters during the party congress: ''Some small pitiful upheavals, some small sourness. Talent always creates some irritations.''

This is the soul-searching season in French politics, not only for the National Front, but across the political spectrum. It was a year ago last Sunday that Mr. Le Pen sent shock waves through the country when he won 17 percent of the vote in the first stage of the presidential elections against President Jacques Chirac, crushing the Socialist left.

Although Mr. Le Pen was roundly defeated in the runoff, and the party won no seats in parliamentary elections last June, he remains a powerful force among disaffected Frenchmen who see the remnants of their traditional way of life threatened by recession, crime and immigrants. In a survey by the polling institute Sofres published last week in L'Express, 20 percent of those who responded said they would not rule out voting for Mr. Le Pen if the presidential election were held today.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party remains caught in a vicious power struggle after its cataclysmic defeat last year. Lionel Jospin, France's longest-serving prime minister, abandoned politics after he came in third in the presidential race.

Earlier this month, in his first television appearance since the election, Mr. Jospin declared that his decision to leave politics was irreversible, adding that he had ''no advice to give'' his troubled party.

By contrast, Ms. Le Pen has lots of advice. She sees her role as twofold: to attract women and young people to the party by the force of her personality and to persuade voters that the party is capable not only of criticizing but also of governing. She currently works as the legal representative of the party and runs an association for younger voters.

Her appointment as a vice president means that she will have a seat on the nine-member executive committee, known as the party's ''holy of holies,'' for the next three years.

''Jean-Marie Le Pen has a tribal -- not a political -- strategy,'' said Roland Cayrol, a political scientist and director of the CSA Institute, a polling organization. ''His daughter is not going to put a knife in his back. And none of the other party members are going to criticize the daughter of the chief.''

Still, Mr. Le Pen has had to grapple with family betrayal. To punish him after their divorce, his former wife once posed nude for Playboy. His eldest daughter, Marie-Caroline, abandoned the party to join a breakaway rival far-right party.

Ms. Le Pen looks nothing like the popular image of a far right-wing politician. ''If people were shown a picture of her and didn't know who she was, they'd think she was a Socialist,'' Mr. Cayrol added.

Julien Dray, a Socialist who is one of the founders of SOS Racisme, calls Ms. Le Pen ''the image of a new National Front generation, more civilized than the others, more pragmatic, but more dangerous.''

Ms. Le Pen's main assets -- her telegenic style and her attractiveness to women and young people -- have rankled the party's old guard, who accuse her of knowing a lot about the media but little about politics.

The party's ''official dauphin,'' 53-year-old Bruno Gollnisch, remains the favorite of party veterans, who do not mind his bookish manner. (The daily newspaper Le Figaro once described him as ''too stiff, too arrogant, too pompous.'')

Mr. Gollnisch, a party theoretician who speaks eight languages and teaches Asian languages and civilization at the University of Lyon, came in first in the voting for the central committee.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Gollnisch declined to criticize Ms. Le Pen's appointment. But her celebrity irritates him. ''I am no longer invited on any television or radio program,'' he complained. ''I don't know if I project an image of being closed; apparently she projects an image of openness. However, I will prepare the presidential campaign and contribute to decisions that will influence the party.''

Mr. Le Pen himself has sought to play down disputes within his party, making clear at the congress that any talk of a successor was a waste of time, since he was in perfect health and would ''remain at the head of the party until I'm 95.''

Ms. Le Pen withheld criticism of Mr. Gollnisch, but not of the party veterans who supported him. ''I did in one year what it took them 20 years to do,'' she said of her media campaign. As for her poor showing in the election for the central committee, she said: ''There was a campaign against me by the party apparatchiks. It's obvious.''

Her politics mirror those of her father, and she staunchly defends her father's policies as prescient. She complains that France is not ''master of its borders'' because of the flow of immigrants, that only French citizens should receive social benefits, that crime is out of control, that the economy is dysfunctional and that the use of the euro as the French currency has made it worse.

She calls the government's support for creating an official Muslim council to resolve disputes with the state a ''time bomb'' because she says it gives power to Islamic militants.

She has no sympathy for Muslim girls who want to wear Muslim head scarves to school as a sign of their faith in violation of France's strict separation of church and state, she said: ''My God! There are 100 countries in the world where they could practice their Muslim ways,'' she said. ''Go to the country that corresponds to your way of life. This is common sense.''

As for her own image, she confesses that there is room for improvement. When one magazine wrote that she was overweight, ''it was as irritating as if I had head lice,'' she said. She quickly shed 11 pounds and is still dieting. ''One has to create a good image,'' she said. ''In politics, looking good is very important.''

Photo: Marine Le Pen with her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, in Montretout, France, last October. She says she will try to ''de-demonize'' the party's hard-line, anti-immigration, nationalist image. (Pierre-Olivier Callede/Gamma)